This collaborative forum thread is for strategic planning as we introduce our new approach to Community Fund governance. Our vision is to enable more communities to build trust and responsibly distribute funds in order to develop and grow the NEAR ecosystem.
Background
172 million NEAR tokens were allocated to community grants / programs in the initial block:
On behalf of stakeholders, a Community Council was established to decide which funding proposals get approved. At first, we conducted votes on the NEAR governance forum (with a special poll widget). Earlier this year, we started using DAOs to implement a better system for transparency / accountability. The Community Squad formed a council serving as an on-chain governance model for the Community Fund.
As we continue to push forward evolving NEAR Community Fund governance with Astro DAOs, the goal is to support multiple “DAO verticals,” which are categorical DAOs that receive funding directly from NEAR Foundation. We have DAOs for creatives, marketing, education, data projects, and more! Overall, the goal is to streamline rewards for individual contributors.
Ultimately, our mission is to empower trusted Ecosystem DAOs which redirect funds to specific DAOs in various categories. Here is a simple “before → after” diagram:
Before
After
Processes
Here is a 3-phase process that other DAOs may use to inform their own participants:
Start Your Own DAO
Everyone should coordinate collaboratively to make decisions together as a community!
Considering the number of different communities in our growing ecosystem, how might we understand the overarching purpose of NEAR as a whole? Generally, the answer to that question depends on everyone who participates, especially in decision making. That’s why more and more Community DAOs will be needed to represent a diversity of perspectives on what successful / good means for NEAR. Hopefully, squad members are trusted contributors, although we are limited by our personal vantage points on community issues.
To address the centralization risk of this v1 Community Squad DAO, we’re planning to introduce another iteration when Astro launches October 4.
Recent Update:
We hope to include any / all community leaders (whether employed by the NEAR Foundation). The plan is to leverage role-based voting policies and potentially social tokens, which enable more contributors to get involved.
Preliminary Experiments
Sandcastle DAO:
MetaBuild Hacker DAO:
Potential Next Steps
Community Choice Awards
To debut the first Community DAO on Astro, as in previous experiments, anyone with a NEAR account may join the “Community Choice Awards DAO” and vote on submitted proposals in various categories, or they can propose options to be considered.
Winners of the community choice awards in each category will get a prize at NEAR | CON regardless of whether or not they are physically present.
NEAR Community Council
Leaders of several core guilds will represent our community on a council of representatives, overseeing the distribution of NEAR Community Fund into a few trusted Ecosystem DAOs.
This forum thread is meant for discussion about a NEAR Community DAO and how to decide membership of representative councils.
Since April, the Community Squad DAO council has played the role of reviewing proposals here on the governance forum and facilitating payouts via Sputnik DAOs. I’m excited to see more and more open web contributors maximizing their potential in the NEAR ecosystem. However, there is a need for adaptive accountability, which means greater flexibility and responsibility.
For anyone who is exploring such governance questions further, I am helping coordinate a research group, led by Token Engineering Academy, focused on analyzing, modeling, and simulating reward systems. With Astro just around the corner, I’m hoping to support everyone reaching for the stars
Let’s create your best possible NEARverse together!
Brainstorming
Discussion Topics / Questions
What is the main goal of a Community DAO?
“To organize and support NEAR communities through a direct connection with the Community Fund (via NF Ops Team and Funding Platform). These communities would be highly engaged in projects and activities related to empowering individuals working together for a social purpose, from a specific locality or globally.” – @mecsbecs
How should the “Community Council” operate?
Fairly, responsibly, and wisely! The goal is to represent organizations participating in the NEAR ecosystem. Who is eligible? What are the processes? Will you help with our experiment?
Why does NEAR have a Community Fund?
That’s up to you! Let’s discuss here and continue improving how resources are shared with ecosystem participants. Your input + feedback is much appreciated
We recently built a NEAR DApp which can help to scale incoming proposals/ideas for this Community DAO, by plugging into Github as a project management tool.
Our DApp currently allows NEAR DApps to host bounties via Sputnik contracts, and their users to vote, fund and work on proposals through our UI, completely onchain - at https://near-testnet.betterhq.org/
We now plan to integrate our DApp into Github, which will allow DApps, Guilds or subDAOs to manage proposals directly in Github issues.
This would bring a number of advantages:
Get a better overview on all proposals than forum, in list or Kanban view
Categorize and manage state of different issues via tags and milestones
Manage responsibilities & accountability via Github accounts
Vet contributors based on their reputation from Github and other identity providers
Automate grants processes: Eg. Use Github bots for pre-set flow (eg. external KYC)
Allow advanced views/project management on top of Github, eg. Zenhub
More granular moderation, with transparent admin roles. Eg. whitelist/blacklist proposals, comments, accounts
Auto-generate website UI based on tags, eg. dedicated sites for Marketing/Education/Hacker subDAOs - With kanban views, or timelines, or lists of proposals
Use the same UI to allow voting and funding, similar to our current DApp
Github allows developers to stay in their work environment
Allows for funding experiments like quadratic matching of user funding from DAO pools
Eventually this Github- & Sputnik-based DApp could become a larger community gigs platform, similar to Fiverr.com, uniting the NEAR grants program, the jobs board and the Community DAO.
This would allow for network effects around matching ideas with builders, while staying Open Source, easy to fork and highly customizable.
v1 (Sputnik): https://wiki.near.org/daos/your-guide-to-daos-on-near#creating-a-dao
v2 (Astro): https://wiki.near.org/daos/your-guide-to-daos-on-near#launching-a-dao-on-astro
Examples of DAO Guides: Topics tagged guide
